


nuclear winter

by almostannette



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentions of War Crimes, Minor Character Death, Soulmate AU, War, mentions of bombings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22102657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostannette/pseuds/almostannette
Summary: People have different approaches when it comes to dealing with the words on their arm. Some flaunt the words, especially if they've already turned black.Others don't make an effort to show their words off, but they don't hide them, either. After all, they symbolize the connection to their soulmate.They’re not supposed to be treated like a mark of shame.Napoleon Solo, on the other hand, had learned to keep his words covered up.(SOULMATE AU!)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82





	nuclear winter

**Author's Note:**

> In the end credits of the movie, it says Solo knows Japanese. All the other languages he knows are European and since the movie doesn't explain whether he's spent any time in Japan etc. - I started thinking about possible explanations and came up with this soulmate AU!
> 
> The soulmate AU was inspired by the wolfstar classic [“](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319809)  
>   
> [The Electric Fizzing Prick Pistols, or Whatever”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319809)  
> 

Everyone is born with a phrase etched into their wrist, which looks just like a tattoo in light grey ink.

Once a person meets their other half, their soulmate, it's just a question of time until the soulmate will say those same words out loud. When they do, the words turn black, confirming the soulmate connection.

However, should one half of the soulmate couple die before the other, the surviving half's words disappear.

* * *

People have different approaches when it comes to dealing with the words on their arm. Some flaunt the words, especially if they've already turned black.

Others don't make an effort to show their words off, but they don't hide them, either. After all, they symbolize the connection to their soulmate.

They’re not supposed to be treated like a mark of shame.

Napoleon Solo, on the other hand, had learned to keep his words covered up.

* * *

At first, when he'd been barely old enough to understand the concept of soulmates, Napoleon assumed he'd been cheated by the system.

His parents and siblings had perfectly legible English words on their arms.

Napoleon's wrist, though, was full of strange symbols.

Napoleon was a bright young kid, he'd taught himself how to read before he'd even started kindergarten. Nevertheless, the symbols on his wrist proved to be an insurmountable challenge. He couldn't make sense of them, no matter how much he tried.

His parents told him his words weren't written in English but in a different language.

Said language's name was Japanese.

That day, young Napoleon spent an hour intently examining his father's atlas, staring at a map of Japan and wondering about his soulmate.

* * *

As a child, Napoleon hadn't quite understood the implications of having a soulmate from Japan.

All that changed the year Napoleon turned twelve.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese words on his arm became a catastrophe.

* * *

From that day on, Napoleon kept his wrist firmly covered and shirked each and every question from family and friends about the words.

The people who didn't know… Napoleon lied to them. He'd always been a prodigy, being able to come up with a convincing lie on the spot. Now, that particular talent served him well.

However, with charming people came the ability to read people's emotions better than the average person ever could.

Napoleon noticed the uneasy looks his parents gave him whenever they thought he wasn’t paying attention.

They didn't trust their son anymore. All thanks to the words on his arm which happened to connect him to someone affiliated with a nation they were at war with.

* * *

Alexander, Napoleon's older brother, enlisted. At the dinner table, he made a couple of boastful, off-color remarks about 'sticking it to the Japs'.

Napoleon pretended he didn't hear it.

That night, he couldn't fall asleep. Napoleon stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, absent-mindedly caressing the words on his wrist.

What was his soulmate doing right now?

Did they also have a brother in the army, who talked about 'sticking it to the Americans'?

Did they also keep their wrist covered at all times?

* * *

The next day, Napoleon went to the library and got himself a Japanese language book and dictionary. Even if he knew nothing else about his soulmate, he at least wanted to figure out what the words on his wrist meant.

* * *

Incidentally, the Japanese phrase on his wrist, when translated into English, read: "Do you think we could have been friends?"

* * *

In hindsight, Napoleon would have preferred  _ not  _ knowing the meaning behind the words.

They ought to have been cute and meaningful, not making it sound as though Napoleon and his soulmate were destined to forever be on opposite sides of a conflict.

The war would end one day, Napoleon told himself. His soulmate and he might have a chance to meet in peacetime. They might have a chance...

* * *

Napoleon enlisted in 1944. He lied about his age, but at that point, it hardly felt like a lie. He'd already had a decent amount of practice in omitting decisive facts and twisting the truth to suit his needs.

At this point in the war, the majority of soldiers were sent to the Pacific, to fight against Japan.

One look at the words on his wrist, though, and Napoleon was being sent to Europe instead, to help in the fight against Hitler.

* * *

No place aged you like the battlefield.

Napoleon went to war as a boy, almost a child, still. For better or worse, war turned him into a man.

The war-torn countries in which he fought were at the other end of the world, as far away from his soulmate as humanly possible, but he wondered...

Was his soulmate like him, carrying a gun that, at first, felt too potent and powerful to be given to a too young soldier like him?

It was possible. Napoleon had seen what desperate, despotic governments did with their people. In Germany, they'd called it the last reserve. They'd made children fight their perverted war.

He'd seen twelve-year-olds in cobbled-together uniforms, half-starved, radicalized and with the afterglow of inhuman horrors forever etched into their sunken eyes.

In comparison to them, Napoleon almost felt old at sixteen.

* * *

The impact of war, he thought, can be measured in several little things.

For example, the moment in which you felt uncomfortable wearing anything other than the uniform.

What about the moment when you started to feel naked if you were unarmed?

Or the moment in which peace felt wrong, like an unwelcome deviation from what had become normal for you.

* * *

There was peace in Europe now, or so they said.

There might have been peace, but they were still far away from prosperity. The war had created wounds on the continent, wounds that would leave ugly scars.

The war was over for Napoleon, but his brother was still fighting in the Pacific.

The war against Japan had not been won yet.

Their parents were still worrying about Alexander, Napoleon suspected. They were still praying every night for their oldest son to survive the war and come back home in one piece.

Napoleon survived, but he'd already made up his mind. He wouldn’t go home again, not if he could help it.

The boy who left home a year ago to enlist without his father’s permission was gone. At the time, it had been an act of desperation disguised as bravery. Now, Napoleon felt he hadn’t only helped to liberate Europe, but also liberated himself in the process.

* * *

It was a summer night in the West of Germany. The month of August was scarcely a week old and Napoleon was unable to get to sleep. His clothes were damp with sweat and stuck to his skin.

The Nazis had surrendered three months ago, but Japan was still holding out. The Soviets had started to move troops to the East, or so Napoleon heard. The Americans were gaining ground as well.

After everything he’d seen in Germany, Napoleon stopped believing in any sort of higher power, but sometimes he still caught himself praying the Japanese leaders might come to their senses yet.

He developed a ritual. At night, when the other soldiers weren’t watching, Napoleon took off the strip of fabric wrapped around his wrist, uncovering the forbidden words.

"’Do you think we could have been friends?’" Napoleon mouths, not daring to pronounce the words out loud, for fear someone could hear.

What words did his soulmate have on their wrist? Napoleon wanted them to have uplifting words on their wrist. Perhaps then the words could serve as a source of comfort for his soulmate in the dark times they had to be going through.

How could they not?

Their soulmate spoke the language of the enemy, after all.

Hopefully, they could look past that, but it was a naive wish, considering--

Napoleon blinked in surprise and his breath caught in the back of his throat.

The words had disappeared.

It felt as though a shockwave went through his entire body before he’d even truly realized what had happened.

Could it have been a trick of the light?

With shaking hands, he shone a flashlight on his wrist. He frantically searched for evidence of the words that had been there just a second ago, but to no avail.

The words were gone. All that was left was the unmarred skin of Napoleon's forearm. For all intents and purposes, it looked like there had never been any words in the first place.

* * *

That night, Napoleon wept for the soulmate he’d never meet.

Boys don't cry, that's what they say.

Napoleon was no longer a boy.

War had turned him into a man.

And the war had ended his soulmate.

* * *

In the morning, Napoleon found out the US military had tested a new kind of weapon against the Japanese.

They called it the Atomic bomb and they’d dropped it on Hiroshima.

The operation had been a resounding success.

Napoleon listened numbly, clutching his left wrist.

* * *

Almost two decades later, Sanders needed an agent to investigate the disappearance of Dr. Udo Teller. The German-born scientist was connected to the Vinciguerras and they were working on manufacturing their very own nuclear weapons.

Napoleon didn’t have to think twice.

He’d already volunteered before Sanders even finished speaking.

* * *

A few years into working for U.N.C.L.E., Napoleon was sent on an assignment to Japan, where he came across a book written about the Hiroshima bombing.

He bought the book and read about the fate of the people his country doomed to die.

Moral bombing they'd called it in Germany.

Gaby lost her mother and her older brother in a bombing of Berlin. She’d been too young to remember them. All she had were a pair of names and a couple of faded photographs.

For Napoleon with his wrist painfully devoid of words, even a couple of faded photographs and a name seemed like luxuries.

Reading about the bombing, now, it almost felt like a perverse form of self-harm. He came across reprints of school essays and diary entries of the people who’d died, mixed with the recollections of survivors. Napoleon took in all the information like puzzle pieces he could use in the reconstruction of the soulmate he’d never met.

Almost towards the end of the book, there was the reprint of a diary entry. Out of respect for the dead, the name was not given, the author was only identified as a then fourteen-year-old girl who’d died in the bombing.

The diary entry was dated June 27, 1945.

Napoleon tried to recall where he was on that day, but it was impossible. All he knew was that he’d been somewhere in Germany, a lost and battle-worn sixteen-year-old.

The girl’s diary entry was, on the one hand, charmingly naive, and on the other hand, war-hardened and embittered at the same time. It was heartbreaking, Napoleon thought, that the girl had to meet war when she’d still been so young.

He blinked in surprise when he remembered he’d been only a year older when he'd become a soldier.

Napoleon shook his head and kept on reading.

_ 'They say the words on your arm are a blessing. But the words on my arm are written in the language used by the enemy. How can they be a blessing when everyone tells me how monstrous the enemy is? I don't believe the supposedly-sacred words on my arm would connect me to someone who is monstrous. I don't believe fate would be so cruel and do something like that.' _

Napoleon swallowed against the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.

_ 'I want to believe my soulmate is a considerate person. I want to believe my soulmate cares about me. I want to believe me and my soulmate would learn to see beyond the war. If I could talk to my soulmate directly, I would want to ask them, do you think we could have been a good match if things had been different? Do you think we could have been friends?’ _

Napoleon stared at the page. The letters blurred in front of his eyes and he traced the last line with the tip of his finger.

"Most certainly," he whispered. "Most certainly."

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic, please consider leaving a comment and/or kudos! <333


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